Softly tinted elegant Art Deco 1920s paintings of flapper, cloche ladies, and fedora gentlemen characters are background for opening credits and commercial-paced break intervals. Theme :41 series stills. Leader, all 10 credits. Bouncy ragtime instrumentals are piano, horns, trumpet - mute is wawa, plunger, or anything. King Oliver. Video. Ellington.
Stage-style almost operatic acting grates, one word bouncing into multiple syllables. Settings sweetly evoke happy time, carefree rich society (like P.G. Wodehouse's idler Berny Wooster and butler Jeeves), deserve greater attention but treated again like theatre, faux cardboard murals.
1 The Sunningdale Mystery adapted by Jonathan Hale, credits overtop golf costumes Wiki
Re-enactments to background narration enliven third-hand tedious "he said, did, she said, did". Cameo of servant Albert (Reece Dinsdale) recalls books, his adoption from rough.
Respectable Captain Antony Cecil, well-known figure on links, wearing typical blue jacket, suddenly "foozles" his shots, rattled by two on a distant footpath, man conversing with tall woman in brown. Close friend and business partner Mr Wilfrid Holloby Sr (Edwin Brown) of Porcupine Assurance was last to see him alive. Another twosome approach, Major Barnard (Terence Conoley) and Mr Lecky (Denis Holmes), see blue coat storm off in temper. Pretty typist Doris Evans (Emily Moore) was arrested because blonde hair and "flame" threads found on the body.
At the railway station she asked directions to his cottage, then returned disheveled, disturbed. She claims she offered him sweets in a cinema, and he offered her an umbrella and tea after. The charming gentleman claimed to be a widower, and invited her to his cottage next weekend for a meal. He acted strangely, with an emphasis on the big knife slicing ham, and after, walking behind golf course, threatened her with gun found next day in bushes.
Intimate details pop out from nowhere. Mrs Cecil is short. Porcupine is bankrupted by embezzler. Doris has bobbed short hair, no need for hatpin. In flattering dark finger waves, dipping seductively close to a pencil thin brow, Tup guesses the Hollobys embezzled, and the killer is male, framing woman with hatpin. On the golf course, Tommy finds a hidden hut, where killer hid to change clothes and appear as woman. Doris, arrested weeks later, never saw the body, met imposter, Holloby Jr (Denis Lill), not Cecil. How does Tommy know villain was not at inquest and identifiable? Driving home, Tuppence again twists hubby around little finger, and their Happy Ever After triumphs over murders.
2 The Ambassador's Boots adapted by Paul Annett, credits over garden party top hat tails costumes Part1. Boots. Pt2. Wiki.
American Ambassador Randolph Wilmot (T.R. McKenna) thanks fellow who returned his monogrammed toilet bag, with bath salts, boots, minor stuff, taken in error disembarking ship, but real owner disclaims exchange. Valet Richards (Clive Merrison) helped Miss O'Hara (Jennie Linden), who collapsed outside door inside cabin, Ashore, valet jumps off bridge to death, to midnight chiming of Big Ben.
Tup re-unites with wartime VAD Voluntary Aid Detachment. In Estelle's (Norma West) off-whites parlor, Poppy (Tricia George), in floral black-cream print, misses wartime ambulance driving. Vividly made-up Gwen (Jo Ross) in man's suit and itchily hoarse false-deep croak, encourages the chattering girls to help misty grey clad "Blunt" to salon. Treatment room has silent mud-dabbed faces, bearded foreigner behind curtain. Miss March is Miss O'Hara.
(Spoilers:
Rodriguez tries to lock door so March, can chloroform Tommy. Mud faces are girls. Genuine beauty shop. Bags were swapped to smuggle in diplomatic luggage. March blackmailed. Bath salts tins measure short on inside, hide powder - cocaine. March invented bath-watered spy map to kidnap apparently credulous detective. Why bother? If she kept away from him, he'd never solve. Fun when caught up, layers of deception, do not hold up to inspection.)
3 The Man in the Mist adapted by Gerald Savory, image of priest in round-top wide-brim hat, white collar, cassock robe, crucifix necklace
PIC TMITM Pt1. Wiki
Eerie footsteps sound in the fog, but Police Constable Bamford (Christopher Johnston) is real, and chatty. Despite the maid hearing a sceam, Mrs Dorothea Honeycott (Anne Stallybrass) denounces at length the desire for divorce of her foolish sister Julia, before allowing them upstairs. But Glenda lies dead on her bed, suspects Bulgur with golf club, Lord L with grappling hook, "Nothing ever happens in Adrington", so the house has no phone, and Tom fetches back the constable. Where is the blood covered blunt instrument that coshed her head?
(Spoiler:
Scream was Reilly's, seeing Gilda dead. Angry husband who refused Glenda's divorce was Bamford, now the constable outside her house, his truncheon the weapon.)
Other YouTube clips
Agatha Listing
Pink Pearl
House of Lurking Death
TPOMT The Pricking of My Thumbs with JM Jane Marple, My Review
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